People stress about the condition of their home. A lot. I get quite a few of apologies like the ones above. I’m constantly reassuring people that yes, there is the same amount of “needing to clean” going on at my house right this instant. My commentary to my babysitters during a rough week is usually something along the lines of “at least you know we don’t live like this all the time”. There’s never a health or safety hazard, but with two kids and two dogs, and three businesses between us, there’s usually a surface or two that could use a good wipe-down… or at minimum some dim lighting (and by dim you know I mean off).

I’ve had sellers go through what must be the entire Martha Stewart Extra-Thorough Spring Cleaning Guide and Checklist (I don’t know if there even is such a thing, but you can surely picture the extensive 3″ binder that it would come in) before they let a buyer into their home. Every. Single. Time. These are not homeowners that have nothing to do. They have kids. They have jobs. They have pets. They have lives. But they’re spending countless hours polishing the inside of the toilet tank. For what? This is real life. Messes happen. If you’re in the process of selling your home and one of your kiddos ran through with a crayon the hour before a showing? Take a decent swipe at it with a microfiber cloth and leave the potential buyers a quick note if you can’t get it off in time. Whatever you do, don’t stay up until 3AM repainting the walls and then waxing the upper side of your ceiling fan blades.

Houses are living, breathing creatures that will always lean toward the chaos if given the chance. I’ve sure seen some doozies (like the one with 30+ indoor cats, or the one that had a few unidentifiable substances on the outside of his toilet… EEK!) and I fully admit that I do keep baby wipes in my car “just in case”. In the big scheme of things, if I didn’t have to spray myself down with flea spray before getting back into my car, or wear a mask and gloves to go in, it wasn’t that bad.

One very important note… none of those truly dirty houses had homeowners that thought their house was dirty. Not one of them apologized to me or made excuses for the condition. So if you’re worried about it, I’m willing to bet that your house falls well with the realm of normal-to-clean.

Make a pact with me: do a good job,and then recognize when it’s good enough and get back to your life, which is way more important than a couple of fingerprints.

On any given day I’m a full time real estate agent, momma and chief wrangler of two kids and two dogs, married to a guy who essentially hunts and fishes for a living, and happy residing on the outskirts of Erie, PA. Sometimes I fool myself into thinking I have superpowers, except my cape is usually in the laundry…I hope. It’s all in a day’s work.